Abuse of Playback, the technologically-derived drug made from distilled human memories, is sweeping the world – and Special Agent Fox Mulder learned too late that Playback was put forth on this planet by the Purity, seeking to condition humanity to their rule so as to better combat the Deadite incursion threatening the aliens’ homeworld. Now Mulder is missing, and it falls to his partner, Dana Scully, to re-activate secret protocol LXG-71, the “League of Extraordinary Gentlepersons” (protocol renamed 1993 for “sensitivity reasons”).
Scully swiftly collects Hong Kong Detective-Inspector “Tequila” Yuen, hyperviolent Wiccan practitioner Nancy Downs, the biological experiment/walking weapon known only as “Edward,” and a young high-functioning sociopath named Zack Morris who has the strange ability to stop the flow of time itself. Perhaps it is this last who attracts the attention of an enigmatic man who answers only to “Rufus,” and who asks Scully to “set history right” and see that two young musicians – that, so far as she can tell, never existed – be born anew, so that peace may flourish on Earth. But the Purity have never shown any signs of temporal travel capability… so who, then, altered history?